[Quote No.55584] Need Area: Friends > General "[Morality and ethics:] Do you not see, first, that - as a mental abstract - physical force is directly opposed to morality; and, secondly, that it practically drives out of existence the moral forces? How can an act done under compulsion have any moral element in it, seeing that what is moral is the free act of an intelligent being? If you tie a man's hands there is nothing moral about his not committing murder. Such an abstaining from murder is a mechanical act; and just the same in kind, though less in degree, are the acts which men are compelled to do under penalties imposed upon them by their fellow men. Those who would drive [force, coerce] their fellow men into the performance of any good actions do not see that the very elements of morality - the free act following on the free choice - are as much absent in those upon whom they practice their legislation as in a flock of sheep penned in by hurdles." - Auberon HerbertAuberon Edward William Molyneux Herbert was a writer, theorist, philosopher, member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom and 19th century individualist.Author's Info on Wikipedia - Author on ebay - Author on Amazon - More Quotes by this AuthorStart Searching Amazon for GiftsSend as Free eCard with optional Google Image

[Quote No.55625] Need Area: Friends > General "[Foreign policy: ...America] goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom." - John Quincy Adams(1767-1848) 6th US President. Source: Speech before the House of Representatives, July 4, 1821; quoted in William Bonner and Pierre Lemieux (Editors), 'The Idea of America' (Les Belles Lettres, 2003), p. 237.
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[Quote No.55626] Need Area: Friends > General "[Foreign policy:] The true theory of our Constitution is surely the wisest and best, that the States are independent as to everything within themselves, and united as to everything respecting foreign affairs. Let the General Government be reduced to foreign concerns only, and let our affairs be disentangled from those of all other nations, except as to commerce, which the merchants will manage the better, the more they are left free to manage for themselves, and our General
Government may be reduced to a very simple organization, and a very inexpensive one; a few plain duties to be performed by a few servants." - Thomas Jefferson(1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President. Source: March 1800.
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[Quote No.55631] Need Area: Friends > General "[A story - with a message about integrity, morality and ethics in life and work:]
'Tell Him to Keep the Ten Thousand' -
[Andrew] Carnegie and J.P. Morgan were once partners in a business. One day Morgan wanted to buy out Carnegie's stake, so Morgan asked how much he wanted for it.
Carnegie said his shares were worth $50,000, plus he wanted an extra $10,000 on top - so a total of $60,000. Morgan agreed to the terms. But the next morning, Carnegie got a call.
'Mr. Carnegie, you were mistaken,' Morgan said. 'You sold out for $10,000 less than the statement showed to your credit.' Morgan had calculated that Carnegie's stake was actually worth $60,000, and with the additional $10,000, that made $70,000. So Morgan sent Carnegie a check for the full $70,000.
Carnegie responded by telling Morgan to keep the extra $10,000 - which, adjusted for inflation, is over $130,000 today. Morgan replied, 'No thank you. I cannot do that.'
When reflecting on this story, Carnegie wrote, 'A great business is built on lines of the strictest integrity.' He learned from Morgan that it is better to lose money in the short-term if that means maintaining your reputation for the long-term." - Alex Banayan[https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/96-years-ago-310-billion-man-revealed-secrets-his-success-banayan ]
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[Quote No.55636] Need Area: Friends > General "[Any global or supranational organization, for example the United Nations, is an advance in diplomatic communication but it can be dangerous in that it may also overwhelm, the unique rights of individual nations, especially minority nations, regardless of their people's wishes - democratic or otherwise:] ...no nation which signs this [UN] Charter can justly maintain that any of its acts are its own business, or within its own domestic jurisdiction, if the security council says that these acts are a threat to the peace." - William CarrNational Education Association [in USA], Associate Secretary.
Source: 'One World In The Making', 1946.
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[Quote No.55637] Need Area: Friends > General "[Statist politicians and bureaucrats:] With government controlling more and more of our economy, the fact that crooks have to go where the money is causes more and more of them to turn to government employment. However, there is probably an even stronger reason for individuals to become politicians. That is the power which accompanies political office. Many idealists think they know better than the ordinary person what is good for that person. They consider themselves a cut above the ordinary individual who just isn’t smart enough to know what he or she should do. Idealists seek government power to impose their ideas upon the rest of us. They may be personally honest insofar as not thinking of lining their own pockets with money but have little compunction about bolstering their egos with government power. This attitude explains the environmentalists, the do-gooders, and others whose ego causes them to seek government power to impose their ideas upon those of us who just want to make our way in a free market in open competition with everyone else. They don’t believe in a free market or voluntary actions. They do believe in controlling others by means of government power." - Harry Hoiles'The Register', June 2, 1979.Author's Info on Wikipedia - Author on ebay - Author on Amazon - More Quotes by this AuthorStart Searching Amazon for GiftsSend as Free eCard with optional Google Image

[Quote No.55663] Need Area: Friends > General "When a human being is free in the most important, political sense, he or she is sovereign. This means he or she governs his or her own life - others must refrain from intruding on this life, plain and simple [so long as all interactions are voluntary and no fraud, force or coercion is involved]. That life may be fortunate or not, rich or not, beautiful or not, and many other things or not, but what matters is that that life is no one else's to mess with. One gets to run it, no one else does." - Tibor MachanDr. Tibor R. Machan was until recently a Hoover Institution research fellow. He is Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, Auburn University, Alabama, and held the R. C. Hoiles Endowed Chair in Business Ethics and Free Enterprise at the Argyros School of Business and Economics, Chapman University from 1997 to 2014. As quoted on August 13, 2015. [http://www.acting-man.com/?p=39292 ]Author's Info on Wikipedia - Author on ebay - Author on Amazon - More Quotes by this AuthorStart Searching Amazon for GiftsSend as Free eCard with optional Google Image

[Quote No.55686] Need Area: Friends > General "If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals -- if we were back in the days of the [U.S.] Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals [what history and philosopher John Locke called classical liberals] and the liberals would be
the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom [socially and economically] and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is." - Ronald Reagan(1911-2004), 40th US President. Source: 'Reason Magazine', July 1st, 1975.
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[Quote No.55705] Need Area: Friends > General "[Real individual and group, democratic choice and true freedom require the absence of fraud or force as well as all relevant information about all alternatives, and not just those sanctioned by the political and other powers that be:] Freedom of the mind requires not only, or not even especially, the absence of legal constraints but the presence of alternative thoughts. The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity, but the one that removes awareness of other possibilities." - Alan Bloom(1930-1992). Source: 'The Closing of the American Mind', 1987.Author's Info on Wikipedia - Author on ebay - Author on Amazon - More Quotes by this AuthorStart Searching Amazon for GiftsSend as Free eCard with optional Google Image

[Quote No.55820] Need Area: Friends > General "Each man must be left free so to exercise his faculties and so to direct his energies as he may think fittest to produce happiness; — with one most important limitation, which must always be understood as accompanying the liberty of which I speak. His freedom in this pursuit of happiness must not interfere with the exactly corresponding freedom of others. Neither by force nor by fraud may he restrain the same free use of faculties enjoyed by every other man. This then, the widest possible liberty, is the great primary law on which all human intercourse must be founded if it is to be happy, peaceful, and progressive." - Auberon Herbert(1838 - 1906), British politician.Author's Info on Wikipedia - Author on ebay - Author on Amazon - More Quotes by this AuthorStart Searching Amazon for GiftsSend as Free eCard with optional Google Image

[Quote No.55829] Need Area: Friends > General "[Self-Defense and Martial Arts - War, peace, politics, propaganda and courage:] 'Anti-War Hero' -
When you hear the term war hero, what do you picture?
Battlefield bravery - charging enemy lines in the face of incoming fire, risking one's life to save the lives of friends, enduring painful injuries without complaint?
You probably don't think of a war hero as one who sticks his neck out to oppose the very war in which he fights.
If we more readily associated heroism in war with the courageous resistance to one's own bellicose government, the world might more often eschew the stupid and jingoistic reasons for which nations frequently shed innocent blood.
Siegfried Sassoon was a hero of both descriptions.
...
Nicknamed 'Mad Jack' by his men for his near-suicidal courage, he was awarded the Military Cross, for which the citation read,
'For conspicuous gallantry during a raid on the enemy's trenches. He remained for 1˝ hours under rifle and bomb fire collecting and bringing in our wounded. Owing to his courage and determination all of the killed and wounded were brought in.'
...
Three years into the [first world] war, Sassoon had had enough. 'In war-time,' he wrote, 'the word patriotism means suppression of truth.' After a period of convalescence from war wounds, he declined to return to duty and threw the ribbon portion of his Military Cross medal into the river Mersey. His conscience compelled him to write this letter to his commanding officer in July 1917:
'I am making this statement as an act of willful defiance of military authority because I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it. I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that the war upon which I entered as a war of DEFENSE AND LIBERATION has now become a war of AGGRESSION AND CONQUEST. I believe that the purposes for which I and my fellow soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them and that had this been done the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation.
I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust. I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.
On behalf of those who are suffering now, I make this protest against the deception which is being practiced upon them; also I believe it may help to destroy the callous complacency with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share and which they have not enough imagination to realize.'
...
Siegfried Sassoon lived another half century [after the end of World War I]. In those postwar years, he earned his living as a poet, editor, novelist, and public lecturer.
...
In 1951, he was named Commander of the Order of the British Empire by King George VI, an honor that recognizes 'contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organizations and public service outside the Civil Service.'
...
Sixteen great war poets, including Siegfried Sassoon, are remembered on a slate stone in Westminster Abbey's Poet's Corner. The stone’s inscription features the words of Wilfred Owen: 'My subject is war, and the pity of war. The poetry is in the pity.' " - Lawrence W. Reed Lawrence W. ('Larry') Reed became president of FEE - the Foundation for Economic Education - in 2008 after serving as chairman of its board of trustees in the 1990s and both writing and speaking for FEE since the late 1970s.
Quotes from the article, 'Antiwar Hero - Siegfried Sassoon', published October 02, 2015. [http://fee.org/freeman/antiwar-hero/ ]Author's Info on Wikipedia - Author on ebay - Author on Amazon - More Quotes by this AuthorStart Searching Amazon for GiftsSend as Free eCard with optional Google Image

[Quote No.55950] Need Area: Friends > General "[A social contract for people living together should include a bill of individual rights and a government constitution:] If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself." - James Madison(1751-1836), Father of the Constitution for the USA, 4th US President. Source: Federalist No. 51, February 8, 1788.
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[Quote No.55954] Need Area: Friends > General "You can't support [government] subsidies for exports, protection from imports, bailouts for Wall Street and tax-funded stimulus bills, and then credibly complain about the 'avalanche of new rules, restrictions, mandates and taxes' that may destroy the free enterprise system. [That is 'crony capitalism' where politicians favour particular businesses rather than free market capitalism where the genius of the free market makes the decisions not politicians.]" - David BoazExecutive vice president of the Cato Institute, an American libertarian think tank. Quote from his article, 'The Divide between Pro-Market and Pro-Business', published October 13, 2015.
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[Quote No.55961] Need Area: Friends > General "[Morality and ethics:]
Immanuel Kant is a philosopher who tried to work out how human beings could be good and kind – outside of the exhortations and blandishments of traditional religion.
He was born in 1724 in the Baltic city of Konigsberg, which at that time was part of Prussia, and now belongs to Russia (renamed Kaliningrad).
Kant was writing at a highly interesting period in history we now know as The Enlightenment. In an essay called What is Enlightenment (published in 1784), Kant proposed that the identifying feature of his age was its growing secularism. Intellectually, Kant welcomed the declining belief in Christianity, but in a practical sense, he was also alarmed by it. He was a pessimist about human character and believed that we are by nature intensely prone to corruption.
It was this awareness that led him to what would be his life's project: the desire to replace religious authority with the authority of reason; that is, human intelligence. Kant pursued this grand project in a major series of books with fearsome titles, including:
'The Critique of Pure Reason' (1781);
'Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics' (1783);
'The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals' (1785);
'The Critique of Practical Reason' (1788);
'The Critique of Judgment' (1793).
In a book on religion titled, 'Religion within the Bounds of Reason Alone' (1793), Kant argued that although historical religions had all been wrong in the content of what they had believed, they had latched onto a great need to promote ethical behaviour, which still remained.
It was in this context that Kant came up with the idea for which he is perhaps still most famous: what he called the Categorical Imperative. This strange sounding term first appeared in a horrendously named work, 'Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals'. It states:
'Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.'
What did Kant mean by this? This was only a very formal restatement of an idea that had been around for a long time – something we meet with in all the main religions: 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you' [often called The Golden Rule']. Kant was offering a handy way of testing the morality of an action or pattern of behaviour by imagining how it would be if it were generally practiced and you were the victim of it.
It might be tempting to flitch a few pads of paper from the stationery cupboard at work. It seems like a small thing. But if everyone did this, the cupboard and society at large would need a lot of guards.
Similarly, if you have an affair and keep it quiet from your partner you might feel it's OK. But the Categorical Imperative comes down against this, because you would have to embrace the idea that it would be equally OK for your partner to have affairs and not tell you.
The Categorical Imperative is designed to shift our perspective: to get us to see our own behaviour in less immediately personal terms and thereby recognise some of its limitations.
[...]
Kant’s books were dense, abstract and highly intellectual. But in them he sketched a highly important project that remains crucial to this day. He wanted to understand how the better, more reasonable parts of our nature could be strengthened so as to reliably win out over our inbuilt weaknesses and selfishness. As he saw it, he was engaged in the task of developing a secular, rational version of what religions had (very imperfectly) always attempted to do: help us to be good." - thebookoflife.org[http://www.thebookoflife.org/immanuel-kant/ ]Author's Info on Wikipedia - Author on ebay - Author on Amazon - More Quotes by this AuthorStart Searching Amazon for GiftsSend as Free eCard with optional Google Image

[Quote No.55966] Need Area: Friends > General "[War, conflict, geopolitical crony capitalism and interventionist foreign policy:] Imagine if today's interventionists had their way and [U.S.] President Obama escalated force [in Syria] and the Assad regime fell. What would be the outcome? Here are some clues. Washington deposed Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq (Syria's next-door neighbor, with many of the same tribes and sectarian divides). It did far more in Iraq than anyone is asking for in Syria, putting 170,000 soldiers on the ground at the peak and spending nearly $2 trillion. And yet, a humanitarian catastrophe has ensued - with roughly 4 million civilians displaced and at least 150,000 killed. Washington deposed Moammar Gaddafi's regime in Libya but chose to leave nation-building to the locals. The result has been what the New Yorker calls 'a battle-worn wasteland.' In Yemen, the United States supported regime change and new elections. The result: a civil war that is tearing the country apart. Those who are so righteous and certain that this next intervention would save lives should at least pause and ponder the humanitarian consequences of the last three." - Fareed ZakariaFareed Zakaria writes a foreign affairs column for The Post. He is also the host of CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS and a contributing editor for The Atlantic. Before being named to his position at time in October 2010, Zakaria spent 10 years overseeing Newsweek's editions abroad and eight years as the managing editor of Foreign Affairs. He is the author of 'The Post-American World' (2009) and 'The Future of Freedom' (2007). Born in India, Zakaria received a B.A. from Yale College and a Ph.D. from Harvard University. He lives in New York City with his wife, son and two daughters. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/vladimir-putins-interventionism-in-the-middle-east-is-not-to-be-admired/2015/10/15/7c939834-7373-11e5-8d93-0af317ed58c9_story.html ]Author's Info on Wikipedia - Author on ebay - Author on Amazon - More Quotes by this AuthorStart Searching Amazon for GiftsSend as Free eCard with optional Google Image

[Quote No.55989] Need Area: Friends > General "[Morality and ethics:] It is not the business of [individuals, groups or] government to make [through force or fraud women or] men virtuous or religious, or to preserve the fool from the consequences of his own folly [although information, persuasion and debate to aid individual free, informed choice and consent is desirable]. [Individuals, groups or] Government should be repressive no further than is necessary to secure liberty by protecting the equal rights of each from aggression on the part of others, and the moment [individual, group or] governmental prohibitions extend beyond this line they are in danger of defeating the very ends [of securing each individual's equal, inalienable birth-right to life, liberty and their pursuit of happiness and property] they are intended to serve." - Henry George(1839-1897) American political economist. Source: The Functions of Government, Social problems, vol 12, (1884).
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[Quote No.55995] Need Area: Friends > General "All honor to [Thomas] Jefferson – to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document [the US Declaration of Independence], an abstract truth [espoused in philosophy - for example by John Locke - in particular, 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness'], applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that today, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling block to the very harbingers of reappearing tyranny and oppression." - Abraham LincolnUS President, known as 'The Great Emancipator'.Author's Info on Wikipedia - Author on ebay - Author on Amazon - More Quotes by this AuthorStart Searching Amazon for GiftsSend as Free eCard with optional Google Image

[Quote No.56032] Need Area: Friends > General "[Self-Defense and Martial Arts:] The enemy of my enemy is my friend. [This is a political-military strategy that uses the idea of, at least temporarily, combining different groups to gain superior forces against a common enemy.]" - Kautilya(flourished 300 BCE), Kautilya, also called Chanakya or Vishnugupta, was a Hindu statesman and philosopher who wrote a classic treatise on polity, Artha-shastra ('The Science of Material Gain'), a compilation of almost everything that had been written in India up to his time regarding artha (property, economics, or material success). He has been called 'the Indian Machiavelli'.Author's Info on Wikipedia - Author on ebay - Author on Amazon - More Quotes by this AuthorStart Searching Amazon for GiftsSend as Free eCard with optional Google Image